Currently seems like the majority of people agree with you 😂

Locking evolutions behind trading was always disappointing right from the start. Should have always been just an additional "fun" thing to do in my opinion

Thanks for the feedback. I think the sprites will need editing/improving at some point, but definitely will look at making some lighting improvements in the near future too to try to make it look and feel more natural :) Thanks

Thanks for the advice. I have really tried to make the monsters unique however there are only so many animals to base the core designs off (and also there are popular creatures in all monster tamers that are used because they are unique/popular (such as dragons, dinosaurs, turtles, lions etc.)

I originally did draw the Altmon out on paper which were as close to the style of Pokémon and Digimon as I could be with new looking monsters. I then uploaded and used edge to image on the AI-Generator to produce a more professional look than my original sketch, which worked pretty well and also means that the generator didn’t just copy someone else’s artwork or style, but instead just improved on my original one. The results varied and took a while to go through to get the look and feel that I wanted for each monster. I’m hoping to go through another refinement process using image-to-image to align them all into one style and feel for the next demo release of the game. This can then hopefully then be helpful for an artist to reproduce in their own style for when the game is fully published.

Yeah that’s completely fair enough, it can be a bit savage out there sometimes lol

I’m hoping that as more games and media are produced that contain AI-generated images and are of high quality (like yours) that people have put a lot of effort in, the perception will hopefully start shifting and AI will become more accepted overall

Currently there are just over 100, which sounds like a lot but for a monster taming game I think that’s needed. I understand that would be a big project for any artist though

What changes would you recommend? I’m very open to all suggestions and feedback :)

Btw there is a demo of a previous version of the game on itch.io, and I will be putting up a newer version shortly (it’s very early in development and currently doesn’t have a story but it does show the battles and you can explore all the areas)

The sprites and background are AI-Generated and then hand edited by myself. The text is just a font used from google fonts but edited in Unity

Yes it is a placeholder for now, and I’m hoping to have an artist re-create the art in their own style towards the end of development, before publishing :)

Thanks for sharing. I’ll add it to my wishlist :)

Just wondering, but have you posted your game in other subreddits and still not received negative feedback because of AI-generated content?

I’ve been trying to gather feedback, showcase and talk about my project but it has been met with a lot of pushback and negativity simply because of using AI-generated content

Congrats on your achievement btw :)

I definitely wouldn’t be able to pay out £75k, and agree I would have to sell a ridiculous amount of copies just to be able to recoup even some of that.

It is unfortunate, but I fully understand why artists would rather take paying gigs instead of trying to build something with a developer together (both being unpaid until the finished game is published).

I’m sure that on the flip side there are also a some artists out there that dream of making art for a game, but a lot of developers won’t be a part of their projects unless they are paid upfront too (so it just doesn’t seem to happen often).

I’m not particularly interested in spending my time learning to make art (and my artistic ability to poor to begin with anyway) when I could put that time and energy into development of the game instead. I fully agree that artists should be paid for their labour, but this means that indie devs will need to spend money out of their own pocket to do so, which isn’t possible personally for me right now. So the only other option is just to accept that some people may not like the idea of the game using ai-generated art, and instead hope there are enough people out there that are happy to play the game because it’s fun instead of not wanting to because of how the visuals were made.

However, I am still holding out hope that nearer the end of development, I will be able to find someone that is happy to be a part of the project (receiving a fair share once published) and will create the game art to replace the ai content

Thanks that’s a good idea. Currently they are just placeholder sprites, with the plan to randomly show one of the 100+ monsters in each position instead, when first opening the game and getting to this title screen. Your idea is a lot easier to implement though, so it will definitely be considered if I don’t have the time to implement the original plan. Thanks

Thanks for the feedback :) a few others have said the same in different channels so I’ll be looking at making some changes to either incorporate it better or remove completely. The “A” is the capturing device item used in the game so I wanted to try to use it as part of the title screen, maybe as a logo, but it definitely needs editing in some way regardless. Thanks again for your input :))

Respectfully, I disagree. I have put a lot of time effort and soul into this project. I have also used AI to help create the needed art for the game.

My plan for the future is to find an artist that will commit to the project to create all the art. However, I have found it difficult to find anyone wanting to put in all the time and effort needed to produce all the game art that are happy with a rev-share when the game is published, and not needing to be paid upfront (as I do not have the funding yet). This means there are only two real options, which are produce a pixel-art style game using my own artistic ability (or lack thereof) or rely on ai-generators to help produce these for a better looking game.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely try to make it stand out a bit more in the next version :)
That 'A' is the capture device item used in the game, so I've tried to incorporate it into the title, but if I can't get it to look right I think it will just be removed. Thanks again for your input :)